


Solution

by x_los



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Checked, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-19
Updated: 2010-02-19
Packaged: 2017-11-22 23:50:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/615748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_los/pseuds/x_los
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt was: "Doctor/Master, dub con. The Doctor is under the influence of sex pollen/in Time Lord heat/drugged with aphrodisiacs, and the Master just happens to be near-by. (Bonus points for Doctors Three to Eight!)"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solution

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Solution  
>  Author: [](http://x-los.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://x-los.livejournal.com/)**x_los**  
>  Rating: NC-17  
>  Pairing: Three/Delgado!Master  
>  Summary: Prompt was: "Doctor/Master, dub con. The Doctor is under the influence of sex pollen/in Time Lord heat/drugged with aphrodisiacs, and the Master just happens to be near-by. (Bonus points for Doctors Three to Eight!)"  
>  Beta: [](http://aralias.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://aralias.livejournal.com/)**aralias** , who I would have said is as necessary as food, but I very often forget to eat, and resent having to do so as frequently as is necessary to sustain life, so that's a bit of a shit example, isn't it?  
>  A/N: edited request for [](http://sizeofthatthing.livejournal.com/profile)[**sizeofthatthing**](http://sizeofthatthing.livejournal.com/). If you'd like, here's the [original version](http://community.livejournal.com/sizeofthatthing/1620.html?thread=2295892#t2295892).

“You _couldn’t_ have been stupid enough to let them touch you with any of that red compound. Not even you, surely.”

They had paused in a copse of trees so the Master could activate the homing device that would point them in the direction of his TARDIS. The Master’s tone was especially vehement because, given the Doctor’s symptoms, he was almost certain that was exactly what had happened.

“Let them?” the Doctor panted, which was hardly a good sign: they hadn’t run far or fast enough to cause a healthy Time Lord fatigue. “Let them _indeed_. They tied me to a chair like a laboratory rat and injected me with the stuff! _Letting_ them had nothing to do with it!” He clutched at his chest: his heartsbeat was elevated. “Why the devil were you working for them?”

“Working for them!” The Master looked up from his device with indignant astonishment. “I was doing only what I had to in order to extricate myself from captivity when you blundered in, allowed yourself to be captured and brought the whole laboratory crashing down around us—sometimes I think you’ve less self control than a child!”

“You, their prisoner?” the Doctor sneered. “That’s hardly likely.” His pupils were dilated, large and gleaming. He raised a hand to his overheated forehead. The Master’s suspicions crystallized into a creeping dread.

“You were planning on letting them do your dirty work for you, and carrying off their results when they’d finished,” the Doctor continued, his breathing shallower. “That’s usually your style, isn’t it? Pretending to be in the service of some deluded alien power, whilst you work towards your own ends?”

The Master, who’d been studying the readout screen in his palms diligently, ignored the accusation. “It’s this way.” He stalked off a few paces further into the woods, both because pressing on was less of a bother than admitting that the Doctor knew him very well, and because whether the Doctor knew it or not, he needed medical care more urgently than he needed confirmation of the Master’s latest misdeeds.

“We should,” the Doctor leaned against a tree, and had to take a harsh, deep breath before beginning again. “We have to go back. To—to release the other subjects.”

The Master wheeled back around to face him. “Come on, do you want to die with them? There’s nothing you can do! Take a look at yourself. Do you really feel capable of charging back down there?”

The Doctor took his point, grudgingly. He stepped forward, almost falling when a wave of dizziness swept over him, blurring his vision.

“I’m not—” the Doctor shook his head. “What was in—”

“We can’t know, with any certainty, until we’re back in my TARDIS.” The Master walked the few steps back and grabbed the Doctor’s elbow.

“I can walk,” the Doctor snapped, shaking the Master off.

He followed the path the Master wove through the thicket. Once inside the TARDIS the Doctor collapsed against the cool metal wall, collecting his shallow breath. He jerked with surprise when he felt a needle slide under the cuff of his jacket, under his skin.

“Hold still.” The Master drew back the plunger, and the Doctor’s blood obediently swirled up the cylinder. “I’m not trying to harm you.”

“For once,” the Doctor agreed. The Master’s gloved fingers left his skin, and with a start the Doctor realized how agreeable the pressure had been. He could still distinctly feel just where the Master’s fingers had lain, as though his touch had branded him.

Something was very wrong. “You—” the Doctor looked up, and swallowed. The Master had turned to the instrumentation panels. He was sliding the sample into an examination tray.

The back of the Master’s neck, where his hairline met exposed skin, was a sort of light brown the Doctor had never properly noted before. Normally coyly concealed from the sun by his jacket’s high collar, it was markedly paler than the rest of him. The Doctor reached out to trace the line, but stopped because the half-realized impulse suddenly seemed foreign and bizarre to him. What was he doing?

“You’ve managed to escape, now,” the Doctor noted. He dropped his hovering hand almost as an afterthought.

“Evidently.” The Master watched the Doctor’s reflection warily. His shining metal instruments gave a warped image, as uncertain and indefinite as the Doctor’s condition, which brought the Master no comfort. He glanced down at the readouts as they started to spool out across the datascreen, his expression severe.

“So why are you still helping me?” the Doctor asked. There was a touch of desperation in his tone, because the simple shapes the Master’s mouth moved in threatened to unravel him.

Bright red liquid. Someone’s idea of a joke. Not the Master’s—but, by the tight set of his mouth, he could see the Master had some inkling of what was happening. His _mouth_ —

The Doctor curled his fingers around the rim of the console with vicious self-control.

“It’s a weapon, you know.” The Master looked down at the readout, at anything but the Doctor. “Not some sort of overly ambitious marital aid. It’s meant to incapacitate an enemy, very thoroughly indeed. There’s a slight chance—” he looked up at the Doctor. “Have you any idea how much they injected you with?”

The Doctor tried to focus on anything but the nervous way the Master’s hands were clenching. Black leather fingers forming fists. The tight pressure of those articulate hands, curling in on each other. He didn’t think he’d ever wanted anything more.

“10ccs,” the Doctor managed, jerking his eyes to the floor. “I think approximately ten or fifteen—” and from the way the Master’s breathing changed, he knew it was useless to finish the sentence.

“Well,” the Master offered after a moment, “it isn’t a lethal dose.”

“But you’ve nothing that will cure me.”

“Not in sufficient quantities, no. And it would be guesswork. It might well do you more harm than good.”

The Doctor nodded. “Surely you have some private room I might… make use of.”

The Master chuckled. It ran through the Doctor like electricity, and he pined in a way he’d not known since feverish adolescence.

The Doctor cleared his throat. “Not quite that simple, then?”

“It’s something of a virus. Very adaptive—I’ve seen the trials. By now it’s perfectly aware that you’re a Time Lord, and that satisfaction, for you, is rather more complex than simply achieving a few physical orgasms.”

The Doctor blanched at hearing him say ‘a few orgasms,’ which was impressive given how hectic his color was. “You talking about it really isn’t helping, you know,” he snapped. “There must be someone,” he cast about desperately, “perhaps some professional.”

“There are certainly people capable of attending to you are back on Gallifrey.” The Master gave a short, rueful smile that pierced through him. “But I don’t imagine they’d welcome either of us back, no matter how dire our circumstances.”

The Doctor slipped his fingers along the wall as he began to pace, letting the cold metal distract him from the burning insistence of his body. “What a shoddy death,” he laughed bitterly. “You know I had hoped to go out with a touch of dignity, perhaps in the service of something I believed in. To waste an incarnation in this ignominious—”

“You are _not_ going to die like this.”

“Aren’t I?” The Doctor shut his eyes tight. “I fail to see any viable alternative.”

“You _simpleton,_ ” the Master hissed. He walked across the room and grabbed the Doctor’s wrist, trying to pull him closer.

The Doctor jerked away from his hands, from the smell of him, from the whisper of his mind. He was wide-eyed, with a sudden chilling suspicion.

“You said you’d seen the trials.”

The Master’s expression grew remote, even cagey. “I did.”

“And I feel certain they weren’t exemplary models of lovemaking.” The drug was beating through his veins. He wanted to shove the Master down on the floor, wanted to fuck that anxious look off his face. He wanted his clothes, his assured demeanor, in tatters.

The Master scoffed, but the Doctor pressed on. “It’s madness—I’ll have no control over myself. I can feel that I won’t. I refuse to hurt anyone in that manner, I won’t _be--_ ”

“My greatest enemy is _not_ going to die because he was too great a milksop to take the only solution available. I refuse to allow it, and,” the Master sneered, “you’ll find I have somewhat better leverage.”

He shoved his mouth up to the Doctor’s. Without thought the Doctor wrapped his hands around the back of the Master’s head, through his hair, pinning him where he was. The Master’s mind was umber with hurt or rage at something, probably the circumstances—the Master swept the emotion under and away too fast for the Doctor to fathom it.

“Not here,” the Master had tilted his head back and was saying, was pressing into his head, trying to ignore the shameless way the Doctor took advantage of the position to attack his neck. “Do you understand me, Doctor? Calm down. You will calm down and come with me.”

The Doctor grabbed at the buffer of hypnotized calm, gratefully pressing it into his mind. “All right,” he nodded. “I’m fine.”

The Master led him through a corridor, walking a tempting foot and a half in front of him. Halfway down the hall the Doctor, his eyes wide and black, spun him around and pressed him into the wall.

“Wait just a moment—” the Master tried.

“I can’t,” the Doctor breathed desperately into the shorter man’s hair before giving his neck a lick. “You know I can’t.”

“Here then.” The Master reversed their positions and slid a hand down to where the Doctor’s shirt was tucked into his trousers. Slipping the button loose, he pushed his hand down further still, over the silk and onto the flesh. He palmed the Doctor’s cock and squeezed, leaning up to bite the smooth juncture where his neck met his collarbone. He jerked hard with vicious strokes, and the Doctor came shuddering into his grasp. He exhaled his orgasm in a relieved, choked breath.

“I trust you’re feeling somewhat better?” the Master asked. When the Doctor nodded he gave a brisk nod of his own. “We should move quickly, before—”

“Yes.”

He laid a gloved hand on the Doctor’s wrist. It both soothed and agitated him. But they were already at a door. The Master’s TARDIS was rushing things a bit. Obliging him—them? The Doctor toyed with the question, wondering just how responsive a TARDIS might be to a non-bonded Time Lord. Then the fever began to rise again, overwhelming him, and everything that wasn’t the Master seemed immaterial.

The Master took a look at the room’s narrow bed—unmade, the Doctor was distantly amused to note—and made a soft tutting sound. It squeezed his lower lip against his teeth and was obscene.

The Doctor swallowed and tried to distract himself. “I would have bet money you were the sort to fold perfect hospital corners every morning.”

Giving him an annoyed look, the Master yanked him back, shut the door, and opened it again. This time the bed was larger, and in perfect order.

The Doctor brought lightly trembling hands up to the Master’s jacket, unfastening the snaps. The Master tilted his chin up. His eyes were hooded, his expression entirely controlled.

Watching him, the Doctor felt he should offer something in return for what he had to do. “You can be the one to—” he began, but he was immediately aware that he wasn’t striking the desired tone. He pressed his mouth to the Master’s and grabbed his hand, planting it on the small of his own back. As the Doctor kissed him the Master’s hand drifted down as if in obedience to the suggestion, He gave the Doctor’s ass a possessive clutch.

After a moment the Master drew his head back and met his eyes. The expression there was so frank and compelling that the Doctor was reminded of why the Master was such a good natural hypnotist. “Doctor,” he said with a note of stray fondness, in a voice that was low and soft, “I should imagine even you’re aware that that’s not going to be enough.”

“I simply don’t want—” he meant to say ‘to hurt you,’ because that was the only honest, appropriate response to what the Master had offered to do for him. But for reasons the Doctor didn’t understand, the Master’s mind shifted at the phrase’s implications. It felt sharp, brittle, crumbling, like flint, and his words were precise instruments.

“I’m perfectly aware of what you _don’t want_.” The Master stepped away from him and sat down on the bed. He finished unfastening his jacket as he spoke, apparently unselfconscious. “But under the influence of this particular concoction, I must _sadly_ remind you that your desires are now somewhat beyond your control, and consequently they exceed the scope of their natural boundaries.”

He looked up at the Doctor with a sort of clinical boredom that didn’t quite manage to conceal his self-satisfaction at being the reason for the Doctor’s dazed expression, the focus of his rapt attention. He tried to stifle a smirk, to raise a disinterested eyebrow. “Shall we begin?”

He was slammed to the bedcovers. The Doctor’s shaking hands covered his skin, pushed him further up on the bed, and tugged down his trousers. The Doctor, black eyed and gone, looked prepared to shove himself in without anything in the way of prelude. The Master had to grab the Doctor’s head in both hands and slam his mind up and in his to get him back.

“Use _something,_ ” the Master hissed.

The Doctor blinked, understanding filtering in. “Of—of course,” he nodded. “Yes.” He started searching the pockets of his discarded jacket, and came up with something vaguely suitable – his frantic fumbling had produced a small pot of raspberry jam. Desperate to proceed, he looked up at the Master with comic hope. The Master returned his look with one of absolute horror. He vetoed the jam and insisted the Doctor get up to fetch something better appointed from his own medicine cabinet. He made the Doctor finish undressing while he was at it, and took his own advice.

And then there were no such opportunities for distance, for delay. The Doctor’s hands shook slightly as his finger slid around the rim of the Master’s entrance and eased in. To their credit, neither of them looked away. Neither avoided directly acknowledging what they were doing. The Doctor found that the eye contact was, curiously, the most erotic part.

The Master’s breath grew ragged. The Doctor added a second finger, and then a third, and the Master’s eyes slipped shut. It was growing ever more difficult to hold the aphrodisiac’s effects at bay with hypnosis. The toxin was making the Doctor’s mind as simple and slippery and _impossible_ to work with as any human’s. There was hardly anything to grasp onto now, so little substance with which to gain a telepathic purchase.

The Doctor slipped out his fingers, and the Master’s eyes opened as he registered a sensation of loss. Then without warning the Doctor slammed himself in, and, startled, the Master dropped their telepathic link. In the sudden chaos of heat and motion he was unable to find it again.

No longer buoyed up by the Master’s undiluted self-control, presented with the temptations of a clenching, untried body around his own, the Doctor lost himself to sensation. He’d never known need, agony or bliss in these essential forms before. An active, well-developed mind prevaricated: it diluted elemental certainties. But the Doctor’s mind had been stripped of such protection, and this encounter was entirely unmediated by rationality. It was tantamount in its intensity to religious fervor, or love.

It _hurt_ not to reach completion. The entire process was exquisite. Coming was too good, was too much, it _burned_ him. Coming was the only thing he wanted to do, forever. He wanted the drug to run its course. He wanted never to do anything but this. He was feverishly grateful it was the Master who he’d lighted on in his hour of need. To his drug-steeped mind, it seemed there was no one better, no one more appropriate. Perhaps he’d always wanted this. Hadn’t he? It seemed hard to imagine anything else being true, now.

The Doctor didn’t understand a word of what the Master said as he repeatedly took him, but he continued until the Master had exhausted his stream of filthy praise, until even his growls and his curses died down. By the time the Doctor was slaked the Master could make little more than tired whimpers, could only breathe in sullen catches. They slept heaped together, profoundly tired. In sleep their breath slipped into a shared rhythm.

*

When the Master woke, he was clean and healed. _Very_ healed. The Doctor must have waved a tissue regenerator at his body for a quarter of an hour. Not only had all the damage from the prolonged, enthusiastic encounter been repaired, the Master didn’t feel any soreness. There wasn’t even any residual stiffness in his muscles. He and the Doctor might as well never have touched.

Normally, he might have complained about the indignity of being cleaned and swaddled in a dressing gown afterwards, like a doll or a child, but after the night’s complicit events he could hardly call _that_ a violation.

He swung narrowed eyes around the room—if the Doctor had _left_ without a word—but no. There the Doctor sat, perched, awake and alert, in a chair beside the bed. He was watching the Master, waiting for him to speak,. He was dressed as he had come in—in lace and velvet, his current elegance incongruous with the Master’s vivid memories of the previous night.

“Good morning,” the Master obliged him, wryly.

“Good morning to you, too. Feeling all right?”

The Master snorted. “Naturally. You must’ve used enough regenerative fluid to cure an amputee.”

“Oh, at least,” he agreed, making the Master arch an eyebrow.

The Doctor rubbed his chin in an abstracted manner, cleared his throat and leaned forward, balancing his elbows on his thighs and his chin on his clasped hands. “Listen,” the Doctor met his eyes for the first time all morning, “I want you to fuck me.”

The Master leaned back against the headboard, studying him. “As a means of restoring the status quo? In order to return to me whatever control I may have lost last night? How frightfully calculating, Doctor. Reducing what I’ve done for you to a simple exchange, so you can pay your debt and wash your hands of me. So you needn’t feel guilty next time you refuse to see my point and have your UNIT friends attempt to shoot me.”

“If you’re not interested—” the Doctor stood as if to leave.

“I didn’t say that,” the Master corrected him. “You’re extremely brittle this morning. I mocked your process—I left your conclusion to stand.”

“Then you want to?” The Doctor eased back into his chair like a jack being slowly wound back into its box.

The Master gave it a long moment before nodding. “Yes. Yes, I rather think I do.”

The Doctor rubbed his neck, nervous. “Now, or shall we reconvene?”

“Oh, now, I think,” the Master chuckled. “We wouldn’t want you to try and squirm your way out of your contract, would we?”

“A contract I suggested, bear in mind.” The Doctor frowned crossly.

“Oh naturally.” The Master raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture, then waved to indicate the bed he sat on—an ironically generous sort of invitation. “If you please, Doctor.”

He stood himself, and watched the Doctor assume a position reminiscent of one of the many the Master had found himself in the previous night. On his elbows and thin knees, the Doctor waited, perfectly still, his discomfort only evident on his face. The Master ran a hand up the velvet of his back just to watch him shiver. With dread? Anticipation? This version of the Doctor could be difficult to read, under his grand front—a little like he had been in the later years of his first life. At the Master’s command, the Doctor stripped off the velvet jacket and resumed the pose. The Master trailed his lips up the Doctor’s spine, over the Jasperware-blue silk shirt he wore. He mouthed the fabric in open kisses, searching out the knobs of the Doctor’s spinal cord. He undressed the Doctor slowly, prolonging the process.

The sex was certainly less frantic than it had been the previous evening, but there was a fervency to it the Doctor could hardly ignore. His fists twisted in already-abused bedclothes, the Doctor tried to put the obvious out of his mind. Surely it was ridiculous. But there it came, regular as the Master’s thrusts, as the deep, satisfied breaths that accompanied them: the inescapable conclusion that he was being made love to.

“Tell me something,” the Doctor asked, able even, at this leisured pace, to do so slowly and steadily.

“Anything,” the Master asked with faux solicitude—or was it?

“That compound of theirs—”

The Master’s touch grew more fleeting, more wary. His hand tightened around the Doctor’s cock, almost possessively. “What of it?”

“Who were they making it for?”

“How should I know?” He took the Doctor with rapid, irritable strokes now. His warm hand, the Doctor thought, was even better than the cool leather of his glove—more organic for its vitality, more real. “The aphrodisiac is infinitely adaptable—a weapon powerful enough to ensnare even a Time Lord like yourself, as you’re so _painfully_ aware.

“I suppose it is.” The Doctor grew quiet, as if to let it rest, dropping his head back down. “Who did _you_ want it for, then?”

The Master’s rhythm faltered entirely for a moment, but then he resumed, continuing with determination. “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh come now, Master,” the Doctor panted under a faster onslaught, less tender than the earlier thrusts—those had almost been caresses. “You’d never so be haphazard in your thinking as to aid someone—a group of aliens, _or_ a fellow renegade Time Lord—without having some _specific_ aim. You watched the aphrodisiac’s clinical trials because you knew what you wanted.”

“Do you really believe,” the Master was fucking him rather angrily now, all his lazy indulgence gone, “that I’d do that to myself? Perhaps you don’t remember—you were a bit _occupied_ at the time—but when you saw to me this morning, you might have noticed stray scratches? Not inconsiderable bruises? Rather unpleasant signs of your presence left all over my body?” He sneered. “Trust you to so entirely distrust my act of altruism. Helping you was a charitable mistake—one I shan’t make again.”

“Oh I _appreciate_ it, Master.” The Doctor switched to telepathy when forming unbroken sentences became difficult. _You certainly aided me when you needn’t have bothered, when it wasn’t in_ your _best interest to do so. And I don’t think you’d ever have given me such an unmanageable dose. No, you’d have waited for a perfect opportunity and administered something you could control, should things get out of hand. Perhaps a dose you’d already have an appropriate amount of antidote for here in your TARDIS? How could you know I’d arrive early, or that the primitives you were collaborating with would manage to spoil all that careful planning?_

Caught out, the Master refused to yield. He tugged hard on the Doctor’s hair and mind, pulling him up by the scalp, exposing his neck and wrapping a hand around it even as he sneered. “And again, why on your benighted _Earth_ would I _ever_ have done _that?_ ”

“Because you’re infatuated with me, I imagine,” the Doctor managed, gasping. The Master’s hand which had been lying idle against his throat, dug in with vicious pressure, and his thrusts became punishing.

“Shut _up,_ ” the Master hissed, “I’m nothing of the _kind._ What a supremely idiotic notion—”

 _In love with me, then,_ the Doctor amended himself sharply even as he audibly choked. _Deeply,_ he ground it in. The Master’s fingers spasmed. His nails gouged deeper into the Doctor’s neck at the words—as the Doctor had marked him the previous evening, he was leaving bruises of his own.

 _What would you know about it?_ the Master thought, shoving himself into the Doctor furiously, as though he thought that if he tried hard enough he could fuck him to death.

 _I did suddenly reinterpret the point last night when you fleetingly thought ‘not like this,’_ the Doctor admitted. _You didn’t use it, you know._

“I would have,” the Master slowed, stopped. He murmured into the Doctor’s sweat-damp neck. “You—” he paused. “Well. I would have.” His fingers fell away from the Doctor’s neck, and the Doctor gratefully sucked in air.

 _You can’t know that._ The Doctor, underneath him still, thought it gently. _Your better nature might well have prevailed. But we can’t deal in possibility. Last night you aided my escape and saved my life, at great expense to yourself, and at possible risk of your own._

The Doctor lowered himself slowly to the bed. The Master was still inside him, and the Doctor reached a hand back, trailing it along the Master’s too-tense thigh.

“That’s all very well,” the Master scoffed. “You're hardly likely to forget that I'm the reason the toxin even exists in a form capable of affecting you.”

The Doctor’s voice was husky from strangulation, but it was no less firmly corrective, nearly even patronizing, for it. “I do understand why you felt you had to behave in such a ridiculous manner. Besides, you know as well as I do that you might’ve come out of last night far worse off. You sacrificed yourself because you love me. You can’t ask me to ignore that, and I daren’t belittle it. If I believe in anything, it’s that love _can_ and does change people.”

The Master’s laugh was a shaking, sickly thing. “I fear you’ll find it’s only brought out the very worst in me. I had a kind of dignity before you. I’d never have stooped so low.”

The Doctor smiled coyly, and he turned his head to the side. “I’m flattered.”

The Master’s head dropped onto the Doctor's back. Both their faces were turned in the same direction, and the Master’s shorter stature made the strange pose rather comfortable. “And what would you have us do now? Surely we can’t continue on as we were. That might prove too humiliating, for either of us.”

“You finish what you’ve begun, for a start.” The words rumbled up from the Doctor’s chest, and the vibrations seeming to travel directly to the Master’s ear without the use of vocal cords. It was like direct contact, a kind of telepathy of the skin. “And then we’ll go some place lovely and, well, _neutral_ , where we can talk about all of this without any silly externalities confusing the matter for us.”

In his mind the Master had played out this scene a thousand and a thousand times. The hard-fought endgame of a plot, the after-effects of the drug, the favourable result of a successful gambit—he had savoured every possible incarnation of the Doctor’s concession. Despite all his calculation, this was a victory he had never anticipated, had never prepared for. The Doctor’s willingness to discuss terms seemed detached and unreal, yet as inevitable as an immovable feast. How keenly children wait for such holidays—with what an impossible combination of faith and doubt. Faith that it will, come, that it _must_ come. That the world they have begun to navigate (so tentatively, like sailors in a strange sea) will not fail them. Its rigid rules will bring tomorrow and tomorrow, and one day will dawn unlike all the others. It will be everything they’ve waited for. It will exceed even its promise. Yet they fear they’ve got it wrong, that they are being had. They cherish the cruelest doubt that the clockwork of an arbitrary world will turn, that such a day will ever come.

He had waited for the Doctor with the arrogant faith and exquisite terror of a child—a feeling born in a boy, which retained its essential character in the man he had become. The end of advent was a paradigm shift too overwhelming for him to immediately process. Later there would be time for him to properly catalogue the pleasures of an unending holiday—now he could only experience, could only lacquer easy banter over a bewildered joy, which passed nearly into awe. The Master forced a pleased chuckle and ran his hand down the length of the Doctor’s body, without furtiveness now. “Someone seems terribly eager to get off Earth. What a shock _that_ comes as.”

“Someone,” the Doctor shifted his weight, bucking up insistently, “is terribly eager for someone else to attend to business.”

The Master signed theatrically, resuming. “Tell me Doctor, are you always so insatiable?”

“You mean am I a gluttonous, wanton, hedonistic nightmare? Yes, naturally. And no cracks about my fashion sense while we’re here. I have it on good authority—namely your own stray thoughts—that you quite like me in some of my ensembles.”

The Master rolled his eyes. “Demanding _and_ vain. I suppose I shall eventually reconcile myself to your flaws, grievous and numerous as they are.”

The Doctor laughed. “I rather think you’re going to have to.”  



End file.
